Word: mikhail
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...Yeltsin had moments that made one believe Russia could shed its authoritarian shackles. His defining moment was in August 1991. While Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was summering in the Crimea, dark forces opposed to Gorbachev and his stop-start reforms tried to stage a coup. Yeltsin's political instincts were still sharp, and he raced to the scene, outside Russia's White House. He climbed atop a tank and urged defiance. The putsch failed. Gorby returned to Moscow, but when he declared his unshaken faith in the Soviet state, Russia was Yeltsin's. By Christmas, the U.S.S.R. was done...
They came by the tens of thousands, some bearing posters depicting the jubilant face of Boris Yeltsin, others holding placards demanding the removal of Mikhail Gorbachev. By noon on a chilly Sunday, more than 200,000 people filled the vastness of Manezh Square outside the crenellated walls of the Kremlin. As a speaker shouted out resolutions, the crowd voted overwhelmingly for authorities to stop persecuting Yeltsin, leader of the Russian republic, and for Gorbachev to resign as Soviet President. Addressing the throng, Moscow Mayor Gavril Popov asked, "Do we trust the leadership of the country?" The crowd roared back...
...demonstration, perhaps the largest in the Soviet Union since the advent of perestroika five years ago, only served to sharpen the conflict between the country's two most prominent politicians. On one side is Mikhail Gorbachev, the father of perestroika and glasnost, the brilliant if testy infighter whose policies not only failed to put bread on the table but spurred most of the country's 15 republics to loosen if not actually break the ties that bind them to Moscow. On the other side is Boris Yeltsin, the Lazarus of Soviet politics, the blunt-spoken and somewhat erratic brawler...
...Boris Yeltsin, 1931-2007 --> Yeltsin's decision, that day, to defy an attempt by old-line Communist Party officials to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev came at a moment as crucial as any in Russia's long and violent history. The leaders had failed to gain control of the White House, the Russian Federation's parliamentary building and the main rallying point for pro-democracy Muscovites. When army tanks rolled up to the building on the morning of Aug. 19, Yeltsin, then the recently elected President of Russia, seized the moment. He strode outside, leapt atop an armored vehicle and delivered...
...Reagan's upbeat personality developed early in life as a way to both accept and transcend a beloved alcoholic father. But years of performing and public speaking molded it into a persona that helped win landslides and kept his enemies off balance. Reagan could go to Berlin and tell Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!" just months after negotiating earnestly with the Soviet leader at Reykjavík, all the while withholding concessions on the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative, the very thing Gorbachev most wanted...